


forgiveness

by agent_cupcake



Series: Follower Giveaway Requests [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Reader is Not My Unit | Byleth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:55:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26090740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_cupcake/pseuds/agent_cupcake
Summary: Third place winner wanted something somewhat fluffy with Yuri and a reader who was a mage and artist//Yuri's expectations are hardly ever challenged, but perhaps this isn't so bad.
Relationships: Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc/Reader
Series: Follower Giveaway Requests [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1883035
Comments: 3
Kudos: 44





	forgiveness

“You called for me, yeah?”

Yuri’s greeting caused you to jump up from your chair, sketchbook pages fluttering to the floor. He probably should have knocked rather than let himself in, considering the circumstances, but the breach in etiquette didn’t seem to stick to you after the surprise faded. Sometimes you scolded him for such antics, but not today. A pity, you were pretty cute when you were indignant. Then again, he did feel a sort of fondness for the way your eyes softened for him, the way you smiled despite being startled. If he had any doubt as to the reason for you calling for him, it was all cast out with that look. Yuri was good at noticing things. Little things, signs in people’s behavior that gave away their feelings. Not that you ever tried particularly to hide what you felt, or perhaps you just hadn’t recognized the feelings for what they were. In a way, receiving your invitation was a relief because, to him, your affection had been obvious for a while. You cared for him. Loved him, even. Yuri had seen it all before. But in that second, appraising you honestly, Yuri decided that he didn’t mind. It was you, after all. Maybe you weren’t all too different from countless of the other women he’d enjoyed, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. He’d come to like you quite a bit and after everything that had happened-

Well, every person had a vice. Yuri was more than well aware that he’d never find absolute regardless; what was a petty indulgence on top of that?

“Yuri! You came,” you exclaimed, just a touch breathless. He doubted that you meant for it to be appealing, but the happy relief in your tone was alluring in a way, even if the hesitant concern in your smile was somewhat condescending. “I didn’t know if you would.”

“With such a cryptic invitation, how could I not?” Yuri responded with a playful confidence to squash the irritation of your tone, dangling the sheet of paper you’d sent to him between two fingers. It was a simple thing, merely inviting him to visit the collection of rooms you’d claimed as a home and art studio whenever you stayed in Abyss, but the lines were clearly drawn up and he was more than capable of reading between them.

“I thought you might want some company. I know you’ve been having…” You paused, chewing on your lip as you carefully selected the right words. Your lip was already red from the treatment, a sign that you’d been stressed. Or nervous. “A hard time.”

Yuri could have laughed at such a massive understatement, but he held off. It wasn’t like there was anything funny about losing dozens of his people in a surprise ambush from hired thugs. It was an insult. A tragedy. An event he should have been able to avoid. Although Yuri knew the aim of the attack was to get him to let off on the nobility, although he absolutely knew that it meant he couldn’t give in, sometimes, between trying to organize aid for the widows of his men and trying to restructure things to fix any compromised pieces of his plan, it was hard to justify to himself. Sometimes the notebook in his pocket was a dead weight, a body count he had to support with every step onward. It wasn’t funny at all but Yuri forced a smile and a confident, if teasing, voice. He was meant to be strong. Besides, weakness would hardly benefit him now. That’s what he always did to get what he wanted, wasn’t it? Lied, pretended. It didn’t matter.

“Aw, you were worried about me,” he cooed, holding your gaze with a winning smile. It had the intended effect, even if you tried to play off your embarrassment. Your reaction was cute. Yuri liked the way your eyelashes fluttered as your eyes leapt around, unable to meet his. The way your fingers danced at your side. You had pretty hands, graceful and dexterous in the way so strongly associated mages, musicians, and artists. They were softer than most, but not without callouses. Yuri would have been a liar to say he hadn’t wondered what they might feel like, if they were as clever as he thought they might be.

“Yeah, I guess so,” you answered. “You’ve seemed different since… It happened. So I wanted to do something to help you feel better.”

“You’re cute,” Yuri said, wondering in an abstract way if you were always this bashful when it came to men or if he was special. “But as you can see, I’m fine. Not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment.” That was why he’d come, wasn’t it? You could distract him —you were willing to!— and with just a word, with a single touch, he could have you at his complete disposal. And maybe that would help. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time he used another to soothe his aching spirit. The self-loathing of his actions hardly even registered. Not yet, at least. “Although,” Yuri said in a lower voice, taking a few steps closer. You were soft, in a way. Guileless and charming in how earnestly you regarded him as you met his eyes. It was a beauty that was all at once shy and overt, and one that he found inexplicably compelling right then. He was close enough to smell the faint fragrance on your skin, close enough to make his intentions clear. “Let’s drop the act, yeah? I think it would be better if we both more honest about what we really want. What I-”

“Wait!” you said, cutting him off. Strangely, you took a step back, an action an odds with your bright eyes and blushing cheeks, clear signs of attraction. “Um, sorry. What I want, why I invited you here, is to give you… I have a gift that I wanted to give you.”

Yuri, caught somewhere between amusement and surprise, stopped and raised an eyebrow. “A gift?”

“Yes, I painted you something. I thought that it might lift your spirits a bit. Maybe,” you said, your excitement edged with a skittish mania now that the mood had turned so abruptly. You gestured to the easel behind you, one that was covered by a ghostly sheet thrown on top. Yuri had discounted it as a trivial piece of furniture, a seemingly omnipresent setup in your rooms.

A gift. You had never painted anything for him specifically, although he had seen some of your portrait work. Painting people was a special hobby of yours when you weren’t engaged in other endeavors. Sometimes he wondered why you bothered at all with the criminal work, but you insisted that art was a mere fancy.

“Consider me intrigued,” Yuri said honestly, dropping the flirtatious effect. “May I see this ‘gift’?”

“Yes, of course,” you said in an overly bright voice. Insecurity and awkwardness was written into every line of your body, scratched deeply into the furrow or your brow and purse of your lips as your smile fell. Somehow, even this was a little charming. “Right. Well, I guess there’s no point in waiting. So-” You pulled the sheet off the easel, letting it drop to the floor without ceremony. Yuri wanted to say something, make some sort of comment about your behavior, but when you pulled the sheet away from the easel, he was rendered speechless.

What could he say?

“Do you like it?” you asked softly, peeking at him sideways.

Yuri was well aware of his beauty. He primed and projected it in the scathingly vain way only an auctioneer of the self could be. His looks were well documented by every painter and wordsmith who had ever attempted and failed to capture him in some capacity. But you hadn’t painted beauty. Portrait-Yuri wasn’t looking at the viewer, but at something past the edges of the canvas. He was smiling, commanding, but there was something else. His allure wasn’t aesthetic, but transcendent of such a trivial attribute. That man both was and wasn’t Yuri. Like he was staring into a mirror reflecting a perversion of reality.

“Yuri?” you asked when he didn’t answer.

Yuri blinked, clearing his throat and forcing a smile. It was harder this time, with such an obvious reminder of what the genuine article was meant to look like right in front of him. “Sorry, I was admiring your technique.”

You swelled with the almost-praise, your eyes alight as they searched his face for any response. “So you like it?”

Did he? Yuri looked back at the canvas. With the second glance, he was able to understand what was wrong with the image, what troubled him so intimately. You had painted a hero. Portrait-Yuri’s smile held no deceit. In his posture, there was no pretend. The man you’d painted lacked Yuri’s sin. The hands he raised in passion as he seemingly addressed someone or someones unseen were clean of filth. After the sleepless hours he had spent trying to clean up a mess that was a direct result of his wrongdoings, the image was like a bludgeon of his flaws. After being so entrenched in the darkness of the world he’d submitted himself to, the light was jarring.

“You can be honest with me,” you told him when he didn’t answer.

Yuri shook his head, trying to push back the feeling swelling in his chest. “I didn’t pose for this, so I’m trying to remember when this might have been,” he lied. Misdirected, really.

“Oh, it was a while ago. You were rallying support, uh, explaining how you were gonna make the nobles take responsibility,” you told him. It took a second for the event to come to mind, but eventually, Yuri remembered vaguely what you were talking about. Moons and moons ago, then, he couldn’t even recall if the two of you had been close at that point. Yuri had nearly forgotten about that night. “Nobody believed that you could do it. I don’t even think I did,” you added after a moment of thought, staring at the painting rather than meeting his eyes. “You were called crazy and overly optimistic and naive. But when you got up to speak, I realized something.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

You turned to him, your eyes sincere. Intense. “It’s not blind optimism or naivety. It’s not like you lie to yourself that the world is better than it is. In fact, I’d hazard a guess that you see the worst parts of the world more than anyone else. But you don’t submit to such a cruel fate or accept that it’s the way things must be. You want the world to be a better place, and you have the will to change it. That night, that’s what I saw.”

If he were any lesser man, you would have rendered him speechless all over again. But he was Yuri, and a response formed alongside a smirk that didn’t even half reach his eyes. “You’re wrong about that,” he said. “About me.”

“I know what I saw, that’s why I painted you in the first place,” you told him stubbornly. “I didn’t know if I was going to give it to you until now, but since everything that happened… I thought maybe you’d need a reminder.”

He knew the words would come out too sharply before he spoke them, but Yuri couldn’t stop himself from asking, “A reminder of what, exactly?”

“Art can’t change the world,” you said, ignoring his tone. “At least, nothing I could do. But you know, people use statues and paintings of saints to inspire their good actions. They look at paintings of Nemesis as an example of evil. When I look at this Yuri, I see you. The you I think you want to be. This is the man that history will remember. So even when bad things happen… Even then, this is-”

“A little paint can’t cover the things I’ve done. That man,” Yuri nodded to the portrait, “isn’t real.” His voice lowered, softened. “Besides, history would be better off forgetting me.” He looked at you, so earnest and trusting, and ran a hand over his face as the guilt formed into a sick slush in his chest for what he’d intended to do. “You would be better off forgetting me, too.”

“Then why do you fight so hard to do good things?” you asked him. “If you believe that the bad things you’ve done have destroyed any hope of redemption, why do you leverage your power to help make things better for the people in Abyss? If you truly believed you were beyond any hope, then doing those things would make you an idiot. Sorry, Yuri, but I don’t buy it.”

“Should I try and convince you, then?” Yuri asked. “I wonder what it would take. If you wish to exalt the best of me, you should know the worst, yeah?”

“Fine,” you said, no hesitation or doubt in your voice. You put your hands on your hips, tilting your chin upward in defiant determination. Yuri was no artist, but if he could have saved the sight of your eyes at that moment he would have gladly become one. The look was not the simple infatuation of a girl, or the affectionate and misguided love he believed had kept you trailing around him. Could he even call it love at all? When you looked at him like that, he felt oddly exposed. Only minutes ago he had believed fully in his ability to manipulate the situation, but right then he wasn’t so sure. “Tell me about your guilt and shame and listen when I tell you that you can be forgiven. That I forgive you.”

Forgive him? You? You, a master forger and gremory who wanted to be recognized first and foremost as an artist. You, a whimsical fool who insisted that beauty was for everyone to enjoy, scoring the ungrateful aristocracy who hoarded it all for themselves. You, who had joined his cause out of a childishly expressed desire to do good. Yuri knew he was guilty of countless unthinkable sins, he knew that enough blood dripped from his hands to drown in, and he knew that even the goddess’s clemency could not save him from reaping what he had sown. Yuri could argue the point if he wanted to. He would have been right to say that he was deserving of your disgust and distrust. He should have done his best to avail you of whatever love you believed you felt for him.

But he looked at the portrait you had painted, and couldn’t. Was that really what you had seen that night? Could that really be him? Those whose names were listed in his notebook, would they believe in such a thing? In such a man?

Eventually, Yuri relented to the war of his thoughts, shaking his head and putting a hand to his temple. “Who put you up to this, I wonder,” he mused.

“We were all worried,” you said, “But nobody put me up to this. It was the only way I could think to remind you of why you’re needed and appreciated. And I was worried because I… I care about you. I don’t want you to be unhappy.”

Those words pulled him from his thoughts, set something within him at ease. The awkward way you stumbled over the words, the way your voice softened them so sweetly. Yuri had been confessed to in hundreds of ways but never had simple admissions been used to such great effect. It was also a reminder that despite your clear feelings, you had rejected his advances in an attempt to make him feel better. Seemingly inadvertently, you had turned everything around on him. Yuri wasn’t sure if he liked the feeling, but he felt a sort of appreciation for the way you’d managed it all.

“Do you, now?” he asked suggestively, peeking up at you. Sure enough, blushing, your iron-clad determination having eased up. But the look _was_ different. Or perhaps his way of appreciation had just changed. 

“Don’t tease me, Yuri, I’m being serious,” you said.

“Who’s to say I’m not being serious? I seriously was asking how you felt. I’d like to know these things.”

You hesitated. “Really?” you finally asked, your tone adorably earnest.

He laughed. It wasn’t full, but it wasn’t fake either. It felt good, as if some weight had been taken from his chest. “Whatever am I going to do with you.”

“Trust me?” you asked.

When Yuri looked up at you in surprise at the request, something within him softened. He wasn’t a fool, nor was he particularly good at lying to himself. It was affection. Desire of the heart. Not just for you, but for the portrait of him you’d created. The desire to be that version of himself.

He smiled, although it was a confused expression, half bewildered and half reeling from surprise. “Maybe I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> CHRIST fluff is hard
> 
> I tried
> 
> First place winner wanted something super spicy so get ready for that my dudes


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